To Hell and Back Installment 2 - The Beginning

There are people in your life that will love you no matter what you do and there are people in your life that will NOT love you no matter what you do.  The trick is to recognize the difference and then stop trying to get love from people who cannot give it and surround yourself with those that will give you love no matter what you do.

Me in the pink dress, my amazing Momma, my brother Allan and my sister Kim

This part of my life is very difficult to write about. It is why I have not written about God's miraculous changes brought about in me. I am not exactly sure I can, adequately, but it's the most important phase of my life and did more to shape who I am than any other stage.  The bedrock of who I am comes from the life I had while my Momma was still alive.  

It wasn't long after this photo was taken that she died of cancer.  I never saw this photo in my life until about a month ago.  My sister had it but I had not ever seen it.  It strikes me deeply because the last day that I felt secure in my life was the day that the ambulance came to pick my Momma up to take her to the hospital....until I met Will.  She never came back home.  As you can see, I was young.  I should have been 6 in this photo.  She died a month after my 7th birthday.  The bizarre thing is that I have had many people trying to get me to picture what I was like when she died and I never could because I instantaneously grew up the day she left.  I never felt innocent, young, hopeful or loved after that day....until I met Will.

I have always felt unable to connect with anyone since that day....until I met Will.  I knew that was a problem and so I will relate to you how I recognized the problems and how God has helped me to grow beyond them.  Some of them cannot be remedied because I missed vital developmental stages in my emotional development but at least I was able to learn my deficits and learn to ask specifically in prayer for help in the correct areas.  

First, I want you to meet my amazing Momma.  My recollections are fuzzy because I was so young.  She died when she was 29 and was buried right after her 30th birthday I think.  My sister knows the facts better than I do because she was 4 years older.  This is what I do know.  Her children were her great loves.  She loved being in her home.  She loved creating things out of nothing.  She loved to rearrange her home and she was constantly repainting the entire home.  She was frugal. She was ferociously protective. She was always fair.  She loved the Lord Jesus Christ with her whole heart, mind, soul and strength and wanted for her 3 children to also love the Lord.  Most importantly I remember her amazing, deep love for me.  I remember her calm and her courage.  When I was 18 months old, my Dad and brother were crushed by a tractor.  My brother Allan's neck was broken and he was hospitalized for a long time and was paralyzed.  He eventually had a surgery to fuse a bone in his neck and it relieved the paralysis but his left side had grown beyond his right side and there was lots of atrophy and so Momma had to do the physical therapy for Allan by herself at home.  She did it without compromise.  

There was a room in our home that we called the library. It had yellow Priscilla curtains, knotty pine wood and books from the floor to the ceiling.  It was a very small room but it was warm and safe and comforting. My Momma discovered that I was different and even though she was so busy with Allan at the hospital, she taught me to read when I was 2 and she recognized I was a ravenous learner and she let me go as fast as I wanted to and made sure that even if she had to buy books at a thrift store to keep me going, she would make sure that I had every opportunity to grow.

Developmentally, when the tractor accident happened, I was 18 months old. For some period of time, I was sent to live with my Dad's business partner's family. After I came home, Momma was very busy with Allan so I missed out on the stage of bonding that children experience between the ages of 18-36 months.  It is during that stage that toddlers begin to get out of their mother's arms/laps and begin to gain a level of independent movement but their safe place is still in their mother's arms/laps.  Children may venture out but they are able to learn that if any danger or pain is experienced, their mothers are able to make everything right again.  I was bonded deeply to my Momma. I still am deeply bonded to her.  I did not learn that relationships are constant, my child mind concluded that relationships are all temporary and that I didn't need to bother to try to connect or let anyone into my heart because they would all leave.  God showed me that just isn't true.  God has a plan and God brings people in and out of our lives to shape us and grow us into who He has planned for us to be.  Losing someone is painful and we are never the same again but He promises to use all things for good according to His purpose for those who love Him.  My sister and I were together our entire lives but she was pushed into a mothering role over me far too young and I looked to her like a mother figure and so the dynamic of being sisters and friends was warped.  We were always at odds because we both tended to try to mother each other in a see-saw fashion and neither of us were able to be children.  A couple months ago, my sister and I had a relationship-altering conversation where I think we finally discovered that it was really okay to be friends.  We both finally awakened to the fact that both of us are very alike and that we are good people in spite of all the pain and damage that occurred to us in our childhoods.  I have always wanted my sister to be my friend and Praise God we finally are.  I love you Kim.  I always loved you but I finally trust you and want you in my life.  God can heal all the parts of us that were harmed but we must be willing to look hard at ourselves and see those parts of us that need His tender healing.  Be courageous enough to look inside and become the beauty that God intends you to be.